Monday, August 13, 2012

Jousting Tournament at the Ohio State Fair

This year, for the first, but hopefully not the last time, the Ohio State Fair included a jousting tournament. The competitors were all jousters with Thomas Nader's Ohio based equestrian troupe Combatant's Keep, while the Knights of Iron -– a jousting troupe from Michigan -- and a few other people, including several kids from a local 4H club, provided ground crew and support staff.

Thomas Nader, the founder of Combatant's Keep, on his horse Maggie.
(photo from the Combatant's Keep website)

Casey McCarthy on Nemesis
(photo from Combatant's Keep website)

Patrick Neil on Diego
(photo from Combatant's Keep website)

Bill Gay on Scipio
(photo from Combatant's Keep website)

The tournament took place during two sessions on Sunday, July 29, one at noon and the other at 5pm. The tournament involved mounted skill at arms(MSA), a “boar” hunt and mounted melee as well as the usual jousting. The MSA portion of the tournament included tilting at rings, thrown spear, Saracen Heads, a small jump, the quintain (1 pt per rotation) and finally pig-sticking. Each competitor ran the course separately. Thomas won the noon session of the MSA with 15 points.

During the noon session of the “Boar” hunt, in which all the jousters competed at the same time, Squire Eddie did such a good job dragging the “boar” around the arena that not one of the mounted competitors was able to catch and kill the “boar”. However, Squire Mary, to the cheers of the crowd, ran it down and stabbed it with a spear.

The Mounted Melee for this tournament was won by collecting tokens placed in sequential order around the arena. Casey cleverly won the noon melee by riding around the arena in the opposite direction from everyone else, collecting four tokens while the rest of the jousters were still fighting over the first token in the direction they chose to go.

Thomas Nader won the noon jousting session, beating Bill Gay by only one point. The final score was Thomas – 9 and Bill – 8.

During the 5pm session, Thomas again won the MSA with 11 points, Casey managed to kill the “boar” in the “boar” hunt, Thomas managed to win the melee by acquiring 3 tokens, and Bill won the joust with a 12 point perfect run against Thomas who scored 6 points.

You can see pictures of the tournament on this slideshow published by The Columbus Dispatch.